


the local boy

by Falmarien



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Bodhi centric, Gen, Original Character(s), because bodhi deserves more, introspective, ish, they all do tbh but bodhi deserves like HUGS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 13:51:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10572612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falmarien/pseuds/Falmarien
Summary: “Do you have a family?” he asked a towering man with a blade half concealed in his boot.For his troubles, he got the briefest of glances.“Ihave a family,” Bodhi said, though it was only somewhat true.--Alexander Freed,Rogue One





	

When the dispatch order came down, Bodhi hadn’t been home for nearly four years.

Life as an Imperial pilot had been simple, all things considered. He didn’t get to pilot starfighters as he'd hoped, but piloting cargo shuttles was much less dangerous, anyway; he got to go around the galaxy, and the pay was better than anything he could have hoped for back on Jedha. It was a simple way of life, one with a clear focus, even if Bodhi knew he would never get to be the higher-ups, he had been fine with that.

Rumour was that more and more cargo shuttles were being sent to Jedha in the last couple of months. What Bodhi hadn’t realised before was that they weren’t bringing in cargo to Jedha, but picking up shipments from there. He hadn’t a clue what the shipment might be—Jedha was a proper desert moon, wasn’t it? Or maybe they had found something under the ground?

He was scheduled to arrive at Jedha in the early hours. Bodhi smiled a little to himself upon seeing the familiar sight of desert, mesas and rocks stretching beyond eye's reach, vast and endless, a scene of serenity he was almost reluctant to disturb under the dreamlike hue of dusk. The Holy City was easily visible from afar, the temple a beacon in the sea of sand.

The sun, like all suns, was out in a blink of an eye, the Holy City painted fiery under it, casting a long, slant shadow on the desert. 

He got closer. And he saw it.

The city was _broken_.

There was no other word for it. The round crystal embedded over the arch of the temple was gone, the outer wall torn, the sleek lines of the structure cut off, crumbled bricks and stones lying about. The front gate was empty, there were no guards, which for some reason was what shocked him the most—the guardians were the one constant thing he had had throughout childhood, even though he did not particularly believe in their cause, the sight of them, solemn and unrelenting, had always been familiar and comforting.

Beyond the temple, the surrounding holy quarter was in shambles, and the new quarter grim and colourless and a third of it looked like it’d been through a bombing just recently. Countless wires were hanging between houses like countless traps lying in wait, a fence enclosing the entire city. The main market was empty despite the hour, a mere shadow of its usual self, the usual vendors and merchants nowhere to be found.

Perhaps all of this was only to be expected under some sort of curfew, he thought, and things weren’t as different as they seemed. He’d find out soon enough.

Bodhi was given a forty-eight-hour leave, and he set out to his aunt’s right after finishing inspection. She lived in the farther end of the new quarter, a family of three, her two kids both younger than Bodhi by ten years at least. They were the only relatives he’d got now. His mother had been living with them when he left Jedha, two years before she died in an accident at the factory she worked.

It took him half an hour to weave his way through the ancient, narrow lanes. More and people had been piling onto the streets, and it was more than enough time for him to see all the identical wary faces, glancing discreetly at the white troopers patrolling the streets or talking in hushed voices, eyes alerted and hand hidden from plain view. And then there were the pilgrims, a whole different breed themselves, a tough crowd that even Empire occupation couldn’t stop them from coming. But the more he walked, the more uncertain he was of their purpose. What things holy could possibly remain when buildings were in ruins and food were in shortage?

His aunt greeted him at the door, pulling him inside and closing the door before giving him a hug, finally a hint of a smile on her face. Bodhi hugged her back, hiding his surprise over her shoulder. Her body was smaller than he remembered in his arms; Neela was his mother’s younger sister, but she looked worn and tired, the crease in her forehead seemed to have grown permanent, older than his mother had even been in his memories.

“You’ve gotten taller,” Neela said, leading him to the kitchen, “but too skinny. You don’t need to send that much money back here, you know. Save some for yourself. Have you been eating properly?”

“It’s not like I’ve better place to spend that money,” and with two kids, Neela needed every help she could get, but he had never known how to say these things, so he just shrugged. “Speaking of which, you’ve claimed the compensation yet?”

Neela looked away, her eyes shadowed, and walked toward the cupboards.

“What?”

“Tea?”

“Yes, tea’d be great, but… is there something wrong? About the compensation?”

For a few moments she busied herself with tea, then she put the steaming cup in front of him, the right mixture of spicy and sweet he hadn’t realised he had been craving for, and sat across from him with a sigh. “There’s none, Bodhi.”

“None of what?”

“Compensation. Not for Ramana, not for anyone.”

“But...”

“They’re blaming it on the rebels, the explosion. Some bombing on the same day, even if that was twenty kilometres away. We aren’t getting anything. Nothing for the families of the four factories blown up in the last few years, actually. Someone talked about wanting an appeal, but it just isn’t possible, not now.”

“But that can’t be! We—how can they do that? The Empire isn’t… that can’t be right.”

“We’ve learned that the Empire isn’t many things, I’m afraid, not as they had us believed. Many things have happened while you’re gone, Bodhi,” Neela managed a smile, if a twitch of her lips could be counted as such. “People are talking about moving. Can you believe that? If they can find a ship, that is.”

“Is that… is that what you want?”

“Me? Where can we go? We’ve no money, and no one to take us in. And the boys are too young, I can’t risk them.”

“Why haven’t you told me any of this? We could’ve, I don’t know, maybe figure something out. Find a planet. Or something. Anything.”

But even as he was speaking, Bodhi knew why Neela didn’t mention any of it in the messages. He was an Imperial pilot, after all. The words died on the tip of his tongue, and he put down the half-empty cup, his fingers curling around it, loosely, like a thwarted prayer.

They remained silent for a while after that, Bodhi helping with the repair of the house, lost in thought. Neela showed him what was left of Ramana’s belongings; the little photo of his father, long gone and as blurred in his memories as in the picture, he put together with the one of his mother. She had been missing him for almost as long as Bodhi could remember. Later, when the two kids were back and the house slightly more lively, he told them about his training, about his new station on Eadu, about his missions; he tried to keep his tone neutral, not glamorising anything but also not getting into any of the mundane and ugly details.

But they came up before his eyes nevertheless, filling the pauses in his sentences, the memories he tried to bury deep: the long waits, the overwhelming sense of solitude in space, the whispers and the sneerings in training, and the way a group of them would mimic the instruction recording trying to get the accent right. The planets, all the planets the Empire left in disarray—or worse—and the peoples, scattered and wounded, the way they turned their eyes away upon seeing the uniform, the insignia. The deaths. The silent, exploding lights in the sky, every flicker a fighter ignited by rebels, and the frantic sound of his heartbeat when he’d seen a classmate died for the first time, swift as a blink and quiet as a fly.

And the scientist in front of him in the meal line, the tall, broad-shouldered man, aloof and sombre with deep lines etched his face, but still there was a glimpse of kindness to be found in his eyes.

“Bodhi, Bodhi.”

“Yes?” He snapped out of the memory, a spray of his forgotten tea cool on his fingertips.

“Are you a starfighter pilot?”

“Can I be a starfighter pilot?”

“No, I fly cargo shuttles,” he said, lowering his voice on Neela’s gesture, talking the two boys to sleep, “of course you can, but starfighters are dangerous…”

He slept in his mother’s room that night. Neela didn’t have the heart to sell everything; Ramana’s silk scarf was still in the closet, the only one she’d ever had, dusty and strange but familiar all the same, like an old dream, like Jedha itself, and all of a sudden Bodhi felt wetness gathering in his eyes, the belated yearning and grief finally catching up, drowning him. 

Bodhi didn’t take it with him when he left. He’d have no place for such things.

 

* * *

 

Between the late night shipment runs, Galen would talk to him, his face rarely truly relaxed but his tone always gentle. Once early on, when he was still Dr Erso, he had asked, “why are you here?” And Bodhi had found himself blanking, because he had kept his head low for so long, and had stopped thinking, and he didn't know, not anymore.

Isn’t it curious how so many things can suddenly come into focus, if you just look from the right angle?

Galen Erso had told him as much; Neela had told him as such. His roommate back in the Academy, who defected three months into the job, told him as much. Bodhi was merely too slow to see it.

Then, when he finally opened his eyes and did as told, he saw things he could never unseen, burning on his retina and leaving him chilled to the bones, and he thought, _what have I done, this isn’t right, this can’t be right_ , and Galen smiled that little smile he wasn’t really sure qualified as a smile, and said, _but it can be made right_.

Stars help him; Bodhi believed him.

 

* * *

 

When he left Eadu for the last time—if all went well—Galen wasn’t there on the landing pad to see him off. Which was only to be expected, it would be too suspicious, but Bodhi had _hoped_ , foolishly… for what, he wasn’t entirely sure, reassurance, perhaps, before quite possibly flying headfirst into his death. 

Well, that was too pessimistic, surely, he couldn’t afford to think like that now. He took off as scheduled, leaving the blasting rain and lightning storm of Eadu behind, Galen’s words ringing in his ears, _be careful, be brave, be true to your heart_. 

He would.

And he was. But that didn’t help him much when he defected—he wasn’t captured, no matter what they said—and brought to Gerrera. His captors weren’t cruel, not really, but they simply wouldn’t _listen_ , and they were running out of time. He _tried_ , how hard had he tried, to talk to the captors, to establish a common ground, but nothing worked. When he asked one captor if he had a family, his feeble last attempt to connect, yet again he thought of Galen and then Neela, the closest he had to any semblance of a family, and of the bustling Jedha City, his beaten home. He could do this. The hatred in his heart melted into something else, stronger and bleaker at the same time. He had to believe that.

 

* * *

 

Then Jedha was consumed by fire.

Well after their narrow escape from the catacombs, en route to Eadu, in the shock and the blurred pain left behind by Bor Gullet, Bodhi suddenly thought of Neela, and felt guilty. Neela and her two beautiful boys. And he only just realised. He put his head between his hands. Around the shuttle, stars were sleeting past him like cold, hard rain.

 

* * *

 

It was almost ironic how the quick turn of events brought him back to Eadu, the storm-stricken rocky almost-home he had had when he was light-years away from the pilgrim moon, the lump of a planet where he somehow met the sort-of friend and sort-of father and the only thing he’d found himself believing in the galaxy, and the one place he thought he’d never have to come back.

Bodhi knelt down on the rocky ground, even through a curtain of rain and the lens of the quadnocs, he could recognise Galen without seeing his face. He thought of that time when he complained about the godawful weather on Eadu, and Galen had agreed, surprising them all. This wasn’t a routine inspection, not this late, and he could almost _see_ that long-suffering look Galen would have on his face every time Krennic did something unexpected. His thoughts were still half on that when he answered Cassian’s question and gave him the quadnocs back; that was when he saw the rifle Cassian was setting up.

The rain was still falling, his cloak was soaked and his hair was sticking on his forehead, but right now, a coldness was welling up from the bottom of his heart, Bodhi knew it had nothing whatsoever to do with the weather.

_What have I done?_

As he slumped his way toward the landing pad, Bodhi tried not to think, concentrating only on doing the task at hand, as for Galen… Galen would do what was right, too.

He managed to keep himself busy looking for a shuttle to steal, working with the droid to move the stuff, and navigating the ship out of the canyons. Then they were safely in hyperspace, and there wasn’t much left to do. Bodhi knew he should try to get some rest, but with nothing left to distract him, the exchange between Cassian and Jyn kept replaying itself in his mind, furious and miserable, and what had happened on that platform was clear without saying. On top of it all, it was Bodhi who led the bombers to Galen. It was because of Bodhi that this young woman lost her father again. It was _him_. Or should he call them rebels? And their actions were justified, weren’t they? Galen himself knew that.

Still, sitting on the zeta-class that wasn’t too big to begin with, amidst this unlikely band of misfits, inescapably, he felt small and lonely. Utterly, irrevocably alone, the last thread holding him up stripped away by guilt.

 

* * *

 

Three hours before they landed on Yavin 4, Bodhi jerked awake from a great fire. There was no way he could have known what it was like on the scene, but he almost believed that burning was real, that smoke choking him was real, and those cries, so near yet so far away—he hit his head when he sat up abruptly, the sharp pain clarified what was reality for him quicker than anything.

A reality of sitting on a freezing ship, not knowing the destination but having no other place to go. It didn’t seem much better from the dream.

 

* * *

 

Bodhi was never a soldier; he had been a pilot, then he was a messenger. Galen Erso’s name brought him back from the agonising hollow in the wake of Bor Gullet, Jedha’s destruction burnt away his lingering doubt, and the bomb on Eadu was a punch in the gut, visceral and sharp, sobering and promptly grounding him back in the here and now.

After the briefing, he made his way through the bustling crowd to the main conference room. His uniform kept drawing people’s attention, but he forced himself to stay expressionless, his steps firm and not too hasty, not betraying any sign of his anxiousness. The noise of the room could easily be heard from a distance; there were too many people, so he stayed behind, hovering around the door. It was enough to hear the council tearing each other apart. 

He no longer harboured any illusions, not of the Empire, nor of the Rebellion. He truly had nothing left. Lost, orphaned, like so many others. Like Jyn.

Like Jyn, who was now in the middle of the crowd talking to the council, her hands flying about, her face harsh and determined, urging them to fight a war she hadn’t care about just a couple of days ago.

What else was there left to do? What can he, of all people, do to help?

Bodhi looked at her, really _looked_ , slight of stature and a few years younger than himself, but fiercely, stubbornly bright. And her eyes—she had Galen’s eyes, like a reminder, and he thought, _yes, this is it, Galen, this is what I am here for._

 

“It won’t be comfortable. It’ll be a bit cramped, but we’ll all fit. We could go.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not particularly familar with the SW universe but this kills me. please let me know if there's any problem :)  
> also, unbeta'd so there are probably some grammatical errors, but i'll be back to fix them.
> 
> the whole idea for this mess of a fic came from Saw saying “local boy, huh?” and that line about Bodhi having a family is only somewhat true, and i had wanted him to have that, a home and a family, even if it's only somewhat true.


End file.
